{"id":424,"date":"2019-10-08T09:11:38","date_gmt":"2019-10-08T08:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=424"},"modified":"2019-10-08T09:11:40","modified_gmt":"2019-10-08T08:11:40","slug":"unforgettable-festivals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2019\/10\/08\/unforgettable-festivals\/","title":{"rendered":"UNFORGETTABLE FESTIVALS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FESTIVALS I HAVE KNOWN AND LOVED<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nfelt enormously privileged to serve as host of The Annual Literature and Ideas\nFestival in my home town of Rochdale during the first four years of the\nfestival before I \u00b4retired\u00b4 over here to Lanzarote. The strong line ups we\nenjoyed each year cemented the reputation of a literary festival that today\nundoubtedly has established its unique selling point amongst the plethora of\nsuch events on the UK\u00b4s arts and culture calendar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leading\npoets like former laureate Dame Carol Ann Duffy, and current holder of that\npost, Simon Armitage, as well as Ian and Andrew McMillan, Lemn Sissay and Tony\nWalsh have all appeared at Rochdale Literature And Ideas Festival. Star names\nof film and theatre too, such as Simon Callow and Willy Russell have also\nspoken at the festival that is held in October each year. Even comedians have\ngiven a turn, with people like Mark Steel, Helen Lederer, Jenny \u00c9clair and Ed\nByrne delivering hilarious and often curiously thought provoking routines.\nThere have been authors, too, like Joanne Harris, of Chocolat renown, Bonnie\nGreer, and crime writer Mark Billingham who have given readings or talks in\nprevious years and even politicians such as Alistair Campbell and Gyles\nBrandreth have turned out at the festival that is now helping Rochdale\u00b4s\nre-branding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Kevin Kennedy
interviewed by Norman Warwick <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The\nwork itself was so much fun for me. Conducting live exclusive interviews in\nfront of five or six hundred people with the likes of Corrie stars Jane Danson,\nKevin Kennedy and BBC radio presenters like Liz Kershaw and her brother,\nfreelance journalist and broadcaster Andy, was a real adrenalin kick. Having\nthe opportunity to join in a live debate with rapper and once-in-a-while\nQuestion Time guest Akele was really exciting and taking part in and reporting\non the all across the arts<\/em> fringe\nfestival was heady stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robin Parker, a former mayor of Rochdale, author of The Edenfield Scrolls, and an artist who was a constant force for good on the local art scene would argue that any fringe worthy of that name has to be organic rather than organised. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the aata<\/em> fringe came about because in the inaugural year of the Literature And Ideas Festival, Rochdale Borough Libraries wisely acknowledged the great number of diverse artists and disciplines in the town who enjoyed local revenue funding. These artists in turn often used their art as an agent for change to help improve certain social conditions by, for example, creating greater awareness of tolerance of various cultural attitudes. Recognising what such artists might bring to the festival the \u00b4authorities\u00b4 consulted with us, and several of us joined a festival steering committee. That committee then invited several revenue-funded arts organisations and local freelance artists to submit plans for their own contribution to the first event and gave us licence to create a Sunday fringe, which we held in the Vibe Radio Station as a somewhat faint replica of an American speakeasy. We had poetry readings, live one to one interviews, story-telling, and stand-up comedy all being delivered by Rochdale artists like Robin, and Eileen Earnshaw and Catherine Coward, and Seamus Kelly and Sid Calderbank and Andrew Moorhouse and Louis Brierley, all hosted by my aata partner Steve Cooke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ngreat thing about the Borough inviting us to create our own events, and helping\nus apply for funding if needed, is that many local arts organisations and\nfreelance artists took the opportunity to work together on projects for the\nfirst time. The Edwin Waugh Society (a commemorative of a famous dialect poet\nof the region) gave a performance and Can\u00b4t Dance Can and Skylight Circus\ndelivered wonderful collaborative projects and in my own field I recruited many\nlocal poets and writers to collate The Choir Of The Unspoken Voice to set our\nown material against lines of Shakespeare or the lyrics of Summertime and Its\nRaining Men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nnot only enjoyed the Literature And Ideas Festival, when serving as its host\nand but also when strolling round the locations, whilst \u00b4off-duty\u00b4 and enjoying\nbeing simply one of the thousands of attendees who strolled through its\ncomfortably literary ambience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe events first year\u00b4, Rochdale town centre was in some disarray and it was\nsubsequently realised that if the Festival was to bring inward investment in\nthe future and attract people from beyond our borders, with spending power,\nthen events would need to be more widespread around the Borough with many more\nvenues involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Ian McMillan (right)
with
Norman Warwick (left) & Steve Cooke<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The\nFestival grew from finance provided in a bequest from a local couple, Frank and\nAnnie Maskew, who first met in Rochdale Library and went on to share a happy\nand life-long marriage. They left funding to the Borough Library Services, with\ncertain caveats about encouraging the townsfolk to engage with philosophy in\ntheir reading and debate. In one of the early Festivals Ian McMillan was\ncommissioned to write a poem celebrating the Maskews and in that poem he had a\nline which I paraphrase here about how they might have \u00b4shared a kiss behind\nthe adult fiction.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nwas a great line, and one I wish I had thought of a couple of years previously\nwhen commissioned to write a piece celebrating the opening of the award winning\nnew build library at Number One Riverside, in the centre of the town. Still, I\nwas proud when my work. On This Day The River Sings, was placed on permanent\ndisplay in the section of the library that was identified as The Maskew\nPhilosophy Collection. It was still there when I \u00b4emigrated\u00b4 on November 9th<\/sup>\nin 2015, though much of that ground floor of the new library was then washed\naway in the floods of Boxing Day 2015 when the River Roch burst its banks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nis the Maskew bequest, and its rigours, though, that perhaps lend Rochdale\nLiterature And Ideas Festival its unique selling point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nLit And Ideas, as it is colloquially known, is a little bit more than your\naverage literature festival. The ideas <\/strong>part\nis the unique selling point, and, rightly so in a town in which a seed of an\nidea was sewn into a crop that grew around the world and is still known today\nas The Co-operative Movement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ninaugural Lit And ideas event was cleverly directed by a Borough Libraries\nstaff member, Suzy Heslan, despite the fact that in 2012 the event was then\ncrammed into a weekend whereas this year\u00b4s will last for a whole week. Looking\nback, I recall how many times Suzy and I seemed to lock horns over various\nissues, but she was rightly fiercely protective of Frank and Annie Maskew\u00b4s\nlegacy and determined that its terms and conditions would be adhered to. Thus,\nshe ensured that philosophy and ideas shared the spotlight of the festival with\nthe arts. Suzy planned and commissioned events like a mediated debate, before a\nlive audience, about whether or not poetry is enhanced by accompanying music,\nand perhaps to get me out of her hair, she put me on the debating panel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other\npanellists were Akela and fellow poet Mike Garry and a couple of academics from\nManchester University. The audience threw all sorts of questions at us and\nindividuals came up with powerful arguments for whatever opinion they might\nhold, and it became pretty dynamic, pretty quickly. The following year the\ndebate was just as philosophical, even if the chair \u00b4simply\u00b4 asked the audience\nwhy Batman didn\u00b4t just kill The Joker. That argument raged long into the night,\nas I recall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Festival Director Punam Ramchun
runs through her events list
with
Norman Warwick of all across the arts<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By\nthe time Punam Ramchun took over the reins as Festival Director, literature,\ndrama, music, comedy, dance, current affairs, creative writing and spoken word\nwere all in the melting pot. Her ability to attract laureate poets and\nprofessors, stage performers and stand-up comics and circus acts and scientists\nensured that the Festival would always be recognised as the Literature And\nIDEAS festival that the Maskews seemed to have envisaged. I vividly remember\nthat the last time I saw Punam was at the Lit And Ideas Festival I went back\nhome to the UK to attend, a year after coming her to Lanzarote. I sat and\nwatched Ian McMillan and his son Andrew give incredibly powerful and moving\nreadings in an atmospheric church on the Sunday evening that closed the event,\nand sought out Punam afterwards to congratulate her on yet another very\nsuccessful Festival. To my continuing chagrin, emotion got the better of me and\nI tearfully told her how wonderful she was and how proud she should be. If\nyou\u00b4re reading this Punam, I\u2019m sorry about the embarrassing histrionics kiddo,\nbut I do wish you every success in everything you undertake in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Punam\nwould, I know, be the first to say how much support she had from RMBC officers\nand library staff, like Philip Cooke and Joanne Eaves and Ray Stearn and I\nremember clearly how passionate she and they were about delivering excellence\nto the town through this festival. The borough\u00b4s communications team, with a\ngreat staff of writers, and guided by Mark Roberts, created a real buzz about\nthe event each year,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After several successful years as Festival Director and as a popular work colleague with Rochdale artists and Council staff alike, Punam has moved on to even greater challenges and a new director is in post for this year\u00b4s event. The new incumbent certainly seems to have created a festival as diverse, challenging and entertaining as any of the past events and that could cement the L & I event\u00b4s place amongst the country\u00b4s best assembled festivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nour next post here on Sidetracks And Detours on Friday 10th<\/sup> October,\nwe will bring you event details and profiles of all the star names taking part Rochdale\nLiterature And Ideas Festival 2019, running from 14th<\/sup> to 21st<\/sup>\nOctober.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FESTIVALS I HAVE KNOWN AND LOVED I felt enormously privileged to serve as host of The Annual Literature and Ideas Festival in my home town of Rochdale during the first four years of the festival before I \u00b4retired\u00b4 over here to Lanzarote. The strong line ups we enjoyed each year cemented the reputation of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aata"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}